Kevin Nolan is a Geordie; Craig Bellamy isn't.

Can it be 7 years ago tonight that I was sitting in White Hart Lane, ecstatic (for a change), as Bobby Robson's Toon turned it round and beat Spurs 3-1? Already it seems like a sepia-tinted bygone age... We could have been more than one behind at the break, but Bobby’s introduction of the tempestuous £9.5 million signing Laurent Robert 'changed the game.' Bellamy got us a free kick, Robert crossed, Clarence Acuña nodded in the leveller. Then Bellamy hared down the left and laid it across the box for a newly-interested Shearer to slam home. (At this point, having sat politely among home fans for 70 minutes, I got off my backside and bloody well cheered.) And then Bellamy helped himself to a third with ten minutes left.
That was the team that brought Champions League football back to Tyneside after the previous season (2000-2001) had been as mediocre as any NUFC had managed in the so-called Premier League. 2008-2009, however, has been much, much worse, and relegation rather than Europe is the matter at hand today.
Wednesday's unsurprising defeat at Man City was rubbed home with Bellamy’s second goal in successive games against us for different clubs. He must have an issue... Bellamy was and is a canny player, but a mean little piece of work, and any lad who referred to himself in the third person before he'd won anything in the game was never going to be content at Newcastle while Alan Shearer was there too. Actually, back in 2001-02 a significant body of Toon fans were just as endeared to little no-necked Craig as they were to the increasingly immobile Shearer. But where Shearer’s commitment to the cause was endlessly tested and found to be staunch, Bellamy ended his Toon career feigning injuries so as not to play, and making risible defences of his conduct directly to Sky cameras. End of story.
Generally the City game was a dreadful night. Injuries to Owen and Barton, 6-8 weeks out for the former, 10 for the latter. It wouldn’t matter so bad if we didn’t already have Beye and Martins on the sickbed, the most vital of our many current casualties. If Shay Given is now off to City then good luck to him and no hard feelings but it’s a strange old mob he’ll be joining. At least we have Steve Harper in nets now, and he’s from Easington, y’knaa.
The flighty Charles N'Zogbia looks to be off somewhere too, or one hopes. ‘Having been insulted by Joe Kinnear,' said high-minded CNZ, 'I will never play for him again while he remains Newcastle manager.’ (Kinnear called him ‘Insomnia’ in an interview, you see.) I’d like to think JFK was being sardonic but his way with words is, well, a not-good way. (‘You can see why a lot of big names out there didn't have the a*sehole to take this job’, Kinnear remarked elsewhere this week.) Well, any road, au revoir N’Zogbia. Happily the staunch Micky Quinn has said all that needs saying of Charlie: 'He’s got the heart the size of a peanut and no respect for anybody, including the fans.'
Today I hear we’ve bagged the Scouse Bolton midfielder Kevin Nolan for £4m. Good signing, good grafter. He’s said the right thing already: ‘I can't wait to play in front of these fans every week.’ Ryan Taylor, the Wigan fullback whose name I’ve taken in vain all four times that he’s scored against us, might yet follow Nolan. It would be nice if he could make it in time for this weekend’s 141st Tyne-Wear Derby, a game that, if it goes the wrong way and other results follow suit, could plunge us into drop-zone damnation from which we’d struggle to recover, in terms of morale alone.

Bruce Springsteen: Life Itself

I had a fairly ho-hum response to the first two singles that came off the new Springsteen album, formally released tomorrow - but the third (promo clip above) is much, much more like it, indeed wondrous, I think.
I've always been agnostic when it comes to the whole fraught business of faith and disillusion that seems to attend the release of every new Springsteen long-player. For instance I thought Lucky Town and Human Touch got a bad rap back in 1992... But I couldn't see why people were so keen on Magic - and was that in 2006 or 2007? Whereas Devils and Dust (2005) was clearly criminally underrated. The Rising (2002) was a solid, solid piece of work, but I do remember the official Springsteen site's bulletin board having to play host to a terribly uppity and sneering dismissal of the record, posted up on its very first day of release, by a supposed longterm fan who declared himself sick and tired of waiting for a return to form. 'Well, sod off then' was my feeling toward said poster, but then I'm someone who doesn't much care for Born To Run...
Over on Counterpunch Harry Browne, a regular commentator in these matters, isn't too keen on the new LP, but he hasn't lost faith either. Of 'Life Itself' he's not willing to say anything much more heady than that it's 'probably as close to a truly interesting lyric as there is on the album...' Once then, again, I'll be reduced to the tricky business of having to make up my own mind...

Hobbesian War of All Against All, Coming Soon!?

It's been quite the week for the mass forecasting of fighting in the streets among angry peasants with pitchforks. To set the tumbrils rolling, in the first instance will the UK really go bankrupt, asks Camilla Cavendish of the Times? She reprints the charming Jim Rogers’ assertion that sterling is 'finished' and we Brits should all learn Mandarin and head for China, or maybe Singapore, Rogers’ chosen bolthole. She adds pointedly that we can be quite sure Rogers and other outspokenly apocalypic hedge funders are ‘profiting handsomely by shorting sterling.’ ‘But’, she laments, ‘the nervy media gave their words considerable prominence, partly because a British bankruptcy is a ghoulishly fascinating possibility...’
Well, not just 'the nervy media', Ms Cavendish, but you too, it seems. (Perhaps she’d rather be thought of as a ghoul than a nervous wreck.)
Cavendish then expresses concern that ‘a vicious circle has taken hold in which sterling falls in value, amplifying liabilities, and bank share prices fall as liabilities mount.’ Yes, troublesome indeed, so one might want to refrain from abetting the flight out of sterling that Rogers & Co are so keen upon...
What, then, is to be done? ‘Technically’, writes Cavendish, in her view the government ‘has mostly made the right moves on the banks… The only thing that could push Britain into bankruptcy would be a full-scale panic. So it is strange - and exasperating - that the Government keeps inadvertently fanning the flames of panic.’
And how do they do so? ‘First, the bailout announcement was overshadowed by reports of Mr Brown's populist “anger” with the banks. This helped to spook investors into fearing that full-scale nationalisation is on the cards…’
No, no, this is getting us nowhere, surely we’re back to the fault of that nervous media, who have now gone and reported the wrong blasted thing?
Cavenish eventually winds round to blasting ‘Mr Brown's spending spree as Chancellor, and the remarkably lax regulation by the tripartite system he put in place’ and observing that ‘it is surely not long before Gordon Brown (Titanic) Enterprises are bought out by Cameron Inc.’ So we see where she's coming from, but not whether we're supposed to feel better...
Okay then, so ‘the pound is plummeting, the once booming financial services sector has never been weaker and some investors are losing confidence in the UK.’ Ross Walker of the Royal Bank of Scotland warns that ‘The credit boom went a long way to disguising the mediocrity of the UK.’ (One could say it went a fair old way to disguising the mediocrity of the RBS too.) But actively trying to make us feel better, and in the course of the same piece from which I took those two quotes above – a piece entitled ‘New look UK economy to emerge from gloom’ – is the FT’s Economics Editor Chris Giles.
The FT’s experts suggest that some of the elements of that ‘new look’ will be ‘a slimmer financial services industry, lower house prices [and hence consumption], higher borrowing costs, fewer migrants and lower growth rates.’ The ‘big losers’ of the current crisis will be ‘those who bought property at the height of the market or are close to retirement without final salary pensions, the newly unemployed and the very rich, whose incomes tend to be correlated with the stock market.’ So on that basis I would feel not so very terrible, but that I bought in early 2006. But then you gotta go when you gotta go...
Giles has found a particular booster for the piece's general tack in ‘Britain’s chief cheerleader abroad’, Sir Andrew Cahn, chief executive of UK Trade & Investment. ‘The most important benefit [of the sterling slump] is that our exports are more competitive’, says Sir Andrew, ‘and we are continuing to attract inward investment as [UK] assets are cheaper to buy.’
But what are Britain’s major exports? Aren’t we in a real poke here too, because of the sorry state to which Thatcher reduced our manufacturing base? Well, Sir Andrew mentions some ‘unlikely sectors’ to be cheerful about, chiefly security – ‘a growth area.’ He insists that security is ‘not just defence equipment but airport protection systems, protective clothing, and security advice and services at sporting venues…’
Oh Jesus, so much for the good cheer. What we have arrived at, then, the sum of all our hopes, lies in the silver lining to the global jihad...? I need a drink.

Oscar Nominees: Good Work, Fellas

Not Oscar's nominees, no, per the photo - but then I know that AMPAS are protective of any and all reproductions of their famous statuette, whereas I do hope Sesame Street are happy to see Oscar the Grouch show up anywhere, as I certainly am and as I imagine those two tourists were too...
No, ordinarily this blog finds it best to yank down the earmuffs and the eyeshades round Oscar Nominations time - an announcement that only marks the end of one round of Drivel being talked across All Media, prior to the commencement of a fresh Drivel festival. But, having glanced at this year's noms list, with a special interest in one or two parties, I have to say I can't remember a year when so many of the Good Guys seem to have won (if you consider the taking-part as winning, which sadly most people don't...)
One can't but be pleased, for example, to see Werner Herzog and Peter Gabriel both getting recognised. Will they both go to the ceremony? They should ride in the limo together, talk about some stuff on the way... Elsewhere, good to see two pictures highly praised at Cannes - the gentlemanly Laurent Cantet's The Class, and Waltz With Bashir - go into the Best Foreign Film pot. I would imagine Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Anthony Dod Mantle will be a gang for the night as part of the Slumdog Millionaire set, and it seems to me they deserve all the praise in the world for their respective inspired inputs to that picture. This blog need say little more on the subject of Sean Penn and Milk save an extra hearty congrats to Gus Van Sant, who served a long stint on this project, and to Focus Features. And I imagine the 13 nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button must be close to some kind of record? I'll be writing about that picture at length elsewhere, but as with the others above, I think in this case the recognition and applause for the quality of the filmmaking is deeply, deeply deserved. As it so often isn't...

ITV: Taking us all for muppets, as well they might

Part of what makes the current 'social mobility'' debate so wearisome are the tired old carrier-bag categories employed in any discussion of social class in Britain. It seems damnably hard for commentators to be serious and insightful about this supposedly perennially Burning Issue, and sometimes I do suspect that it's beyond them, or beneath them, or makes them too personally edgy and defensive. (Not for nothing did Richard Sennett title his great American study The Hidden Injuries of Class - that captures the furtive tone of things perfectly.)

The French do it far better, strange to say. Where would we be in this mess without the unimprovable terms déclassé (as in 'winter suntan' or 'electronic goods') or petit bourgeois (in its modern sneering usage)? After all, while it would be ludicrous in this day and age to conduct a conversation about the British class system solely within the Marxian categories of 'bourgeoisie' (petit or haute) and 'proletariat', it would be no less ludicrous to assert of all parties to said conversation that 'We're all middle-class now...' - as if society were some fat bell-curve of solid bourgeois burghers, with a smidgen of upper-crust toffs to the right of the curve and an intractable lump of lower-class scum to the left.

All the above being said, I don't pretend expertise in the sociology of the class debate but I feel confident that I'm a few steps clear of its usual torpor just from having read Pierre Bourdieu's classic Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (the French again!), from which it became clear to me that assessment of any individual's true class status must be made on a graph that employs an x axis of 'cultural' capital as well as a y-axis of material wealth and social status. In Bourdieu’s famous formulation, ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.’ Taste is socially constructed, and so reflects on the individual and serves to situate him or her within what Bourdieu called habitus, ‘systems of dispositions characteristic of the different classes and class fractions’ - systems, in other words, that are harder to read than a bank statement, or an entry in Debretts, or indeed a court judgement. Having read that much of Bourdieu, I mentally closed the book on the matter; in fairness it's probably time for me to read him again.

Anyhow, last night ITV broadcast a sensationalising schoolboyish hour-long doco called Too Posh To Pay about the supposed corruption and hypocrisy of 'the middle classes' and their seeming behind-the-curtain addiction to acts of white-collar crime. Fair enough as telly, it was a neat compilation of the sorts of true-life 's/he lied to me and stole my money' tales that fill the tabloids. But as to the definition of 'middle class' - well, there wasn't one, not even the barest attempt at one. And from the hard-hitting Crimewatch tone of the voiceover, you'd think we viewers would want to know how to identify all these middle-class scumbags who are pilfering our savings and cash-tills and conning the council or the taxman, just so we can see them coming in future, like shuffling zombies over a hill...

Nope, the real problem was all there in the title - specifically the word 'Posh', a term that was decisively hollowed of meaning back in 1994 (or whenever) as soon it was applied by Simon Fuller to Victoria Adams - you know, Jacqui Adams's girl from Harlow, now worth probably around £120 million, but still - just like all of us - proudly 'branded on the tongue', to borrow Wyndham Lewis's formulation. Or to put it another way, as James Baldwin put it in an essay of 1979 entitled 'If Black English Isn't a Language, then Tell Me What It Is':

To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to "put your business in the street": You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future...

In defence of social mobility, one should say that Baldwin was certainly wrong about the 'future' bit: clearly he never spent enough time on this 'damp little island' to run into any Bradford millionaires wearing silk hats, and he didn't live long enough to consider the case of Victoria Beckham. But, to return to Too Posh To Pay - most of the penitent 'middle class' wrongdoers interviewed weren't really 'middle class', but rather a bit to the left or the right of the curve. And I knew as much because of their accents...

The effect of this demonising little entertainment was to make me feel sorry for the poor slandered middle classes. Maybe I should start taking the Mail. ITV must reckon we're all a bunch of muppets; but then, fair do's, they've got grounds for it, in that there seem to be a lot of Brits out there who think Martina Cole is gritty realism, and the singers on X Factor are brilliant, and Victoria Beckham is posh.

Paddy Considine plus RTK, in words and/or pictures...

Well, it's beyond my bloody powers of computing non-prowess but I daresay some of you might be able to follow this link here and so use Quicktime Player to view the videorecording of the Paddy Considine BAFTA career interview conducted by yours truly at the Bristol Watershed back on November 21 of last year, and allegedly now available to the casual browser. I can get the audio track, but it's not the same, is it?

Pete Townshend: Sound and Fury, Signifying Plenty

If we're talking Things rather than People, then I can't think of much that brings me more joy in this world than Pete Townshend's guitar-playing (taken in tandem, of course, with his imperishable songwriting and, on occasion, his plaintive/urgent vocals, on those occasions when he's not letting Roger Daltrey be his full-throated interpreter.)
In terms of the guitar alone, it's all about his dynamism and his artistry, isn't it? Re. the former - a few weeks back I had a really enjoyable chat with the musician-turned-filmmaker Simon Fellowes - about film and music, as it happens - during which he revealed that he had attended the Oo's famous Charlton FC stadium gig of 1976, and he and his mates were already feeling fairly excited before the band hit the stage, at which point Pete, in the act of striking the opening chords of the first number, slid to the front of the stages on his knees...
The artistry? The other night I finally watched the authorised Who documentary Amazing Journey, given to me as a birthday gift by my wife in 2007, and it was all very fine, along with a bonus DVD offering the expected extras, but the gems on that second disc to my eye are four mini-films devoted to each band member. The ones on Townshend, Moon and Entwistle offer brilliant musical analysis, and really confirm my feeling about the stunning redundancy of most rock ‘n’ roll journalism - a form that still abounds and yet hardly deserves to exist. No sort of writing about rock music by non-musicians can properly instruct a sincere pilgrim on the true nature of the creative decision-making behind musical composition and performance. But good audiovisual documentary-making certainly can.
For instance: I’m not a massive U2 fan, though I certainly like ‘em; and The Edge’s distinctive guitar stylings aren’t among my favourite sounds; but I must say he’s brilliant on the Amazing Journey films in terms of his comments on (and impromptu demonstrations of) the flamenco influence in Townshend’s acoustic playing. As for the electric side of business, both The Edge and Pete’s brother Simon are also highly insightful about Pete's signature ‘crash chord’, and Simon also offers a useful illustration of his brother's distinctive dropping of 'the third' from regular chords. What documentary film can add to all this, and so set the seal on the excellence of the lesson, is by cutting to the subject in action, and the filmmakers do this well. I should do likewise, in the spirit of underlining that Pete hasn't lost it, in fact in some ways he's getting better.

Blackburn 3 Newcastle 0: For God's sake

Full marks to the True Faith sight for an editorial that offers the correct analysis, and the appropriately despairing and vitriolic tone, in respect of Saturday's dreadful Championship-beckoning defeat, and the comments before and after the game from Joe Kinnear:

'Until now Kinnear has been tolerated by supporters - but if this is going to be a permanent arrangement then the future is postponed… Joe - do yourself a favour, bank the loot you’ve already had off Ashley and go back to pruning the roses.'
'[Kinnear says], 'Our biggest problem is a lack of strength in depth. Why wasn't it addressed by the previous two managers? I am carrying the can for it.' No Joe, the last two managers operated wholly under Ashley and were not given funds to buy the players required. Had [Keegan] been given modest funds you would still be down the f**king bowls club… You do realise why you ended up with the job in the first place, don’t you? It was because no-one decent would touch it with a f**king bargepole and you have made a t**t of yourself sticking up for Ashley, proving your lack of credibility. [Keegan] wasn’t perfect but he worked for Newcastle United whereas you work for Mike Ashley. And that is the nub.'

Social mobility: a 'national crusade'

This blog naturally takes an interest in the Government's new proposals aimed at increasing social mobility in the UK, and in Gordon Brown's assertion that the cause of improving people's life chances ought to be a "national crusade". Fair do's, but be careful you match your deed to your word, bold Crusader...

As we know, and the FT neatly summarises it, ‘The UK has particular issues with a lack of access to some of its elites, and it is poor at helping the poor to escape entrenched poverty.’ The Conservatives still like to see themselves as the Party of Opportunity, and Labour liked the sound of that title well enough to pinch it from them. So I trust there won’t be any political argument about the principle that people with talents and ambitions but impoverished means ought to be assisted by the state toward the achievements of which they are capable – achievements in fields where the better-off get a significant headstart. Since our particular estate in life was not ordained by God, there ought to be periodic and vigorous human adjustment of the apparent order of things. ‘Some people will always be dealt tough hands’ is how the FT puts it. ‘They must be helped to play their cards as well as possible.’

On the other hand, I firmly endorse Will Self’s sentiment that ‘in order that poorer but more able kids should be able to succeed it's important that richer and thicker ones should be encouraged to fail.’ I would modify that only to say that a goodly number of the Thick Rich will fail quite naturally, if permitted to, and they could then be usefully advised (as, periodically, are the less academically gifted children of the proletariat) on the worth and dignity of labour and apprenticeship, as opposed to the more frivolous career path upon which Marlborough and Oxford would have set them had they been more deserving of it.

So far, so worthy. I can see, though, that the Government’s plans to formally outlaw ‘class discrimination’ are a pointless gift to the Daily Mail (as is the sadly enduring career of the terrible Harriet Harman, a common-coin hypocrite and as big a walking joke as ever held high office in the Labour Party and Government.)
That said, Cameron’s Tories have been trying to take ownership of the issues of poverty alleviation and social mobility, despite the natural scepticism of their harder-headed supporters, such as the Mail. I have been impressed by the shadow Work and Pensions secretary Chris Grayling, a seemingly reasonable and thoughtful man who speaks well on the subject of ‘appalling worklessness’ and how we’ve allowed failed estates to become ‘separate worlds.’ I think he’s on the right track, but I’m less convinced when he starts pushing the party line about 'family breakdown' (appalling marriagelessness?) being such a vital factor in all this. And when he says ‘This is all about Gordon Brown fighting class wars and internal Labour political manoeuvring’, he’s merely being trivial. For better or worse, Brown and Labour are genuinely vexed by 'all this'.

A measure of Brown's intent? Well, Alan Milburn is back... As Brown’s 'social mobility czar', no less. To Milburn's credit he’s sounding serious, as he tends to, about the hidden barriers obstructing ambitious children from poorer backgrounds. As the council estate-raised son of a single mum from Tow Law (etc etc), this is a personal matter for Milburn, but he does the standard key-note speech on the issue pretty well.
Just the other day I was asked, not the first time – and on this occasion by a scholarly researcher from the North East, who’d read Crusaders very closely – whether the novel’s Dr Martin Pallister MP was ‘really meant to be’ Milburn? He isn’t, though the fictional Pallister has the typical mindset of the modernizing, northern ex-lefty-turned-Blairite Labour MP – a type of which Milburn is a glaring example.
Per the Crusaders affinities, though, I had to laugh in reading the self-proclaimed sand-dancer Kevin Maguire going after Milburn in the Mirror for what he gets paid in consultancies – ‘raking in the cash’, indeed, from Pepsi, Lloyds Pharmacy, ‘investors profiting from NHS privatisation’, and his own firm, the magnificently named AM Strategy. Late on in Crusaders Martin Pallister gets a similar roasting to his face from a local journalist in the course of a public debate in Newcastle:

‘I’ve a question for you, Martin, I’m wanting to know if there’s a price on every word comes out of your mouth. I’ve been looking into this man, see. Do you know even half what this honourable gentleman gets up to?’
Todd was brandishing a wad of paper, A4 pages in scarlet, waving them before him.
‘Take a sheet and pass it on there. Have a look. Some of it’s Register of Interests – not all, mind. No, he’s not doing badly for an opposition man. Consultant to TronTech Computer Systems. Where are they from, eh? Crooksville, Ohio, how about that? Twenty-five grand a year he gets for that… Now, what do you suppose TronTech get for their money? You think they won’t come knocking if
he’s ever in office? ‘Computer in every classroom’, indeed. I’ll bet they’ve a
fancy for a nice fat contract in Crooksville.’
‘Then you see he gets ten grand off Hart-McGrain oil, you know that Mr Salter, don’t you? Another ten off Hook Millard lobbyists in London. And – oh yeah – his researcher’s a lad on secondment from Hook Millard and all. How’s that work? Well, you might want to look at who he speaks up for, when he bothers to speak – all his early day motions, whose interests concern him... Aye, I tell you, they all want a piece of this man. They’re buying shares in him.’

I’ve tended to imagine myself tough on Milburn and the causes of Milburn, but I should confess that this Times article of his about Newcastle regeneration seemed to me an unusually articulate and felt contribution to the debate – from a politician, at any rate.

Northern Lights Film Festival 2008: affable discussions of horrendous subjects

The Northern Lights Film Festival have posted some nice photos from this year's bash up onto a Facebook page, and already these bring back some funny memories - most particularly of the slightly surreal and riotous final night at the Baltic when the 'Big Pitch' talent competition was decided, and a substantive cash prize awarded to some suitably delirious young talent, followed by the compulsory elbow-raising beer 'n' wine frenzy at the bar next door.
Rewind about 4 or 5 hours and you get the tranquil scene here pictured: myself chairing a discussion on low-budget horror filmmaking in the Digital Lounge of the Tyneside Cinema; to the left of frame, the director Steven Sheil and his producer Lisa (they of the much-lauded Mum and Dad); to the right, the short filmmaker David Pope (and by that I mean a director of - very fine -short films, and not someone who's no taller than, say, Tom Cruise.)
Of course, the real horror of this scene was only to unfold a few minutes after I stepped off the platform and got on the phone, to learn that effing Stoke City had got their last-minute equaliser at Saint James's (see passim.) I won't bloody be forgetting that either...

'Vaz "very surprised" that Prince thinks "Sooty" a term of endearment'

Can't really improve on the manner (above) in which Politicshome.com chose to bullet-point the comments of Keith Vaz, MP and Home Affairs Select Committee Chairman, on the topic of the Windsor lad and what he likes to call his duskier 'friends' (who are of course at liberty to tell the Prince to f*ck off - I mean, what could it possibly cost them...?)
This 'friend' is Cirencester Polo Club member and 'millionaire property developer' Kolin Dhillon. Apparently Sooty has been his 'affectionate nickname' for assorted royals and polo associates for 'at least 15 years'. I can't improve on the rest of what is online at the Evening Standard, so here are the gems:
- Mr Dillon 'is said to be close to other members of the royal family who also refer to him by the name.'
- "Neighbours near Mr Dhillon's home in Coates, near Cirencester, said no one outside the polo fraternity called him 'Sooty'..."
- "A member of the CPC, who asked not to be named, said the name Sooty had been introduced to put "two fingers up" to political correctness... [This source] said of the royal family: "They are no more racists than I am"...

Newcastle 2 West Ham 2: what yuh done to yer heid, Andrew?

Cornrow hair-dos on rock stars, I can just about allow to pass. (Basically I can't think of any to mention, beyond the one sported by Axl W. Rose, and this blog uses and keenly endorses Chinese Democracy, also being of the view that Axl's long locks back in his G'n'R heyday were basically those of a big girl.)
But in general I would be on the side of those who think that cornrows look fairly peculiar on white males. On black guys - I rather think they're best carried off if you happen to be a hip-hop MC or R&B vocalist. On black footballers, well... Rio Ferdinand's used to crack me up, and I guess it must have cracked up his teammates and eventually old Rio too. (David James's imitation-Rio was just James doing what he does best, i.e. worst.)
And Newcastle United's contribution to this key masculine grooming issue? I'm thinking back, and until today only Carl Cort, the makeshift 'striker' bought from Wimbledon by Bobby Robson for £7 million, sprung to mind. That was before Andrew Carroll of Bensham took to the field for today's home game against the Irons...
I am unreservedly delighted that the lad who's been banging them in for the stiffs all season has now notched his first top-flight goal, and by all accounts he put himself about for 90 minutes and proved a proper handful and salvaged a valuable point - for all that the result feels like a slight stumble back into the relegation mire, exacerbated by Stoke's point against the same Liverpool side who stuffed us over Christmas. I would love it, love it if Andy Carroll led the line with honours for Newcastle United in seasons to come.
Still, but. Sort your hair out, bonny lad. I know you think you've just sorted it but you've not. Never mind 'the stick' you'll have had off the teammates already. Listen to Alan Shearer on MOTD, who liked the barnet about as much as the direction on that header that found the side-netting when we were 1-0 in the first half...

Esquire (February 2009) now on stands: includes former junior senator from Illinois + Mickey Rourke

This would be Esquire's inauguration issue then. The inimitable Andrew O'Hagan writes about Obama therein. Elsewhere, the excellent Miranda Collinge interviews Michael Sheen. My contribution is a short consideration of The Wrestler, now in UK cinemas. The bits that are taken for pull-out quotes in these cases are usually a wager on what is the reader's likely interest. In this particular case:

"In The Wrestler’s first reel Aronofsky keeps his camera on The Ram’s shoulder, as if the film were hard-edged docu-drama. But in fact he’s just shooting his star, teasing us before revealing Rourke’s face – the complexion tandooried and tenderised, the lips like waxen fruit."

Call me hypocrite, lecteur, but I go on to say that I do wish people could stop writing about the tragic case of this actor's former handsomeness - it's a little bit unseemly - but then The Wrestler makes this impossible: the movie is just such a big untrammelled load of Rourke.

For the sake of full disclosure I should admit that back in late 1986, while Rourke was rumoured to be in Belfast researching an accent for a movie role with the help of the playwright Martin Lynch, I undertook a most unwise night of underage drinking in some unsuitable pubs he was (no doubt wrongly) rumoured to be frequenting. Why? Well, no doubt the touching hope of bumping into him and striking up an instant rapport. I lost it at the movies, indeed...
Currently one notes that Rourke is really putting himself out there for the awards season, and much is getting written about his Early Life and Later Lost Years, including an interview piece in the New York Times by Pat Jordan about which, one supposes, the subject may have mixed feelings.

Correlli Barnett and the pointless horror of raining down death from above

I haven't heard (or rather, paid much attention to) the name of Correlli Barnett since I was a sixth-former, which was back in the 1980s, at which time a high proportion of the Thatcher Cabinet appeared keen to summon Barnett as ballast for their argument that Labour's policy backwardness was entirely responsible for Britain's post-war decline, and that the Tories would not sit back and be mere managers of same.
Naturally this esteemed Fellow of Churchill, Cambridge and author of The Collapse of British Power has not been letting his sword rust in its scabbard while I was looking elsewhere. Yesterday in the Times he gave a timely and well-seasoned blast on the old horn about Israel's latest failure:

"The Israeli leadership (including Mr Barak, a soldier who ought to know better) have yet again been deluded by the seductive fallacy that air power (especially air power in today's hi-tech form) can win wars all on its own, and at no cost to those flying the bombers or directing the drones on TV from remote “PlayStations”... So the task of rescue falls to Israel's own ground troops - conducting a messy struggle with hate-fuelled guerrillas amid close-packed slums."

Worse Than Barbie

This Christmas my younger sister-in-law made me a rather inspired present of the 'Hillary Nutcracker' (pictured), which offers a decent likeness of La Clinton as well as some funny copy on the box ('What'd You Expect -- A Teddy Bear?').

So far, so amusing. Here's the problem: my daughter has now started playing with the toy Hillary, talking to it ('I like your necklace') and - horrors! - kissing it!

I am starting to consider making a necklace of my own, out of garlic, as protection against this clearly evil charm. A stake to the heart would be the next grave step. But I fear it will be to no avail...

RTK review of The Glass Room (Mawer) in today's Financial Times

To be found here. Looking through it as it appears online, I realise that one extra sentence was excised for length from the proofed version that I checked a couple of weeks ago. For my own completist's sake, the sentence in question ran: "Somewhat akin to Swann’s lament over Odette, Viktor rues that the sum of his passion should be expended on ‘a half-educated, part-time tart.’" But then we all feel that at times, don't we?

The Observer's literary map of Britain: Includes me! Part 2

These were the handful of things that struck me on reading Kate Kellaway's very interesting piece:

1. KK describes the general perception of the "Hampstead novel" as “a middle-class morality novel - probably involving adultery and shallow-masquerading-as-deep.” Yes, that was my prejudice too. The thing is, a fair bit of my forthcoming second novel is set in Hampstead. Will I get away with saying it's an in-joke?
2. KK writes, “(A)lthough British novelists now spread their nets more widely, there is still a paucity of state-of-the-nation novelists, writers able to move freely across the map and get an aerial view. Hanif Kureishi puts it like this: "Dickens had a sense of the whole society, from prisoner to home secretary. No writer has that now." I recognise the condition Hanif K is lamenting but I don't agree with the general prognosis. It may be that fewer writers have Dickens' ambitions and/or interests, and that fewer readers want to be bothered with big Dickensian novels, so affecting the supply of same. But any good writer has what Norman Mailer called 'the power to inhabit men's minds', and women's minds too. I don't for one minute rate myself up in the big league writing-wise, but I know that, were I so inclined, I would have the power to get into Jacqui Smith's head, or Karen Matthews', say, without too much fuss.
3. KK asserts that P.D. James has the best policy on the liberties a novelist must take with place, per this prefacing quote from Devices and Desires: "This story is set on an imaginary headland on the north-east coast of Norfolk. Lovers of this remote and fascinating part of East Anglia will place it between Cromer and Great Yarmouth but they must not expect to recognise its topography nor to find Larksoken nuclear power station, Lydsett village or Larksoken Mill. Other names are genuine, but this is merely the novelist's cunning device to add authenticity to fictitious characters and events." Yes, I agree entirely, as KK knows. I remember her enthusiasm when I quoted this very same passage to her on the telephone. And the 'Author's Note' at the front of Crusaders is a homage to the wisdom in these matters of Baroness James of Holland Park.
4. KK writes, “(T)here are hardly any novelists living in NW3 any more - the place is indecently expensive. In that sense, Crouch End – where mum’s lit flourishes and where many novelists now live - might be the place to watch." This, like #1 above, makes me feel uneasy, albeit for a slightly different reason...

Shay Given: too much for the keeper to handle

Given's agent has presented Seamus's feelings to the media in unusually and sharply eloquent fashion: "Shay is very despondent following the very poor performance of the team against Liverpool last weekend. It was the lowest point of his football career and a performance that he would not wish to be repeated. When he signed a new five-year contract in 2006 it was on the basis that the club would challenge for major honours, but on the present evidence all that he can see ahead, with the turmoil on and off the pitch, is a battle for survival."

Given is one of those great players who came to Tyneside and picked up the Geordie disease, God bless him, which is why he's stuck through bad times to put himself in spitting distance of an appearance record without a medal to his name. As Michael Walker of the Independent comments, Given "regards himself as a naturalised Geordie and his children have been born in Newcastle." Well, in this matter I endorse and second the comments of NUFC.com: "Like the departure of Peter Beardsley to Liverpool in 1987, we would struggle to blame Given if he left. It certainly wouldn't be for the money and any anger felt would be aimed at the club, rather than the individual."

"Good evening Mr Waldheim / And Pontiff, how are you?"

"... You have so much in common / in the things you do." Apologies to Lou Reed, but this interesting number from the New York album has been running through my head ever since that old Hitler Youth alumnus Joseph Ratzinger, who now gets to call himself Pope Benedict XVI, made his touching pre-Christmas pronouncement about the human race dying out because of homosexuality and 'gender theory', and the need to preserve 'God's creation' just as zealously as we protect (or talk about protecting) the rainforests.

Clearly, obviously, there are no homosexual people whatsoever in the Roman Catholic Church, closeted or repressed or otherwise. But other gay Christians have gamely engaged with Ratzinger on his own toxic terms, arguing (from the Bible? You tell me...) that people in this world with homosexual inclinations are also part of 'God's creation'. That all seems a bit too polite to me, but whatever: I do believe you should let people go to Hell in their own sweet way, even if they condemn themselves so out of their very own mouths.

To speak of one such, after Ratzinger's verbal excretion BBC News 24 gave airtime to one of his UK apologists, Joanna Bogle - I say 'apologist', but she appeared very proud of herself and her faith and of God's vicar in the Vatican, while also clearly feeling herself the member of a brave and persecuted minority of staunch moralists out there. So the BBC's blonde female newsreader got quite an earful from Bogle, as well as being patronised royally (and inexplicably) over her grasp on the provenance of birds and bees. Hey, let all voices be heard and debated in this world, but people who believe the stars are God's daisy chain should be very careful about patronising anybody. That such belief should also lead one into the conviction that the sole purpose (and attendant worth) of human sexuality is vested entirely in the making of babies is a shocking ignorance too; and an equally great big shame.